2.1 Locating postcolonial feminist hermeneutics
2.1.1 Postcolonial studies
Postcolonial biblical criticism like feminist hermeneutics has its roots not in biblical studies but in a secular discipline, namely postcolonial studies and feminist theories. It will be helpful therefore to locate postcolonial feminist hermeneutics within its two homes, namely postcolonial studies and thereafter feminist hermeneutics. Firstly we shall turn our attention to postcolonial studies and then establish its link with feminist hermeneutics and other liberation discourses.
This will hopefully lead to a possible, or a working definition of the term ‘postcolonialism’ as it relates to my study.
In brief, the rise of postcolonial theories emanates from the rise of the Western empires and their scramble to divide the world among themselves, using strategies of colonization from the eighteenth through to the twentieth century. Their imperial ideologies shaped the cultural, economic, political, religious and even the emotional lives of the colonized from a Eurocentric worldview, which was deemed superior, while the worldview of the colonized was regarded as inferior and even demonic. Imperial ideologies were also used to sanction acts of domination of foreign nations. Edward Said (1988:7) is very clear on this European domination of other peoples (which he refers to as “an undeterred, and unrelenting Eurocentrism”) in his statement that:
All of the subjugated peoples had it in common that they were considered to be naturally subservient to a superior, advanced, developed and morally mature Europe, whose role in
the non-European world was to rule, instruct, legislate, develop, and at the proper times, to discipline, war against and occasionally exterminate non-Europeans.
The colonized began to develop forms of resistance in a chain of reactions including “a massive political, economic and military resistance that was itself carried forward and informed by an actively provocative and challenging culture of resistance” (Said 1988:8, cf. Dube 2002:100).
Western imperialism therefore forms the frame of reference for the term postcolonial.
Postcolonial theory has no fixed starting date (Sugirtharajah 2002:2, 2006:64). It embraces two historical periods namely the period of colonialism and its aftermath, which is the current period of neo-colonialism. Segovia (2005) is helpful in tracing the chronological development of postcolonial theory and even mapping postcolonial biblical studies.
From Segovia’s survey9
9 Segovia brings to our attention that postcolonial discourse evolves from Post Cultural Studies (PCS). According to Gugelberger (cited in Segovia 2005:30), PCS arose in the 1960s in the academy as a variant study within the revisionist project and even emerged as the umbrella counter discourse embracing the concerns of the other variant studies such as Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, African- American Studies etc. It engaged in
‘colonialist’ and ‘post-colonial’ studies. Postcolonial studies became increasingly popular in the 1970s, with the study of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) as a central text. The 1980s saw the establishment of the centrality of
‘colonialist’ debate, which focused both on the impact of imperialism on the colonies and the reaction of the colonized by way of corrective writing. Thus, from Gugelberger’s work, we gather that PCS constitute a literary project of “non-European origin, oppositional in kind, dialogical and corrective in mode” (quoted in Segovia 2005:30). Its literature included the texts produced in the process of colonization both by the colonizer and the colonized. This literature was studied and analyzed from the perspective of the colonized.
(2005:25-39), and from the works of other writers such as Sugirtharajah, (2002, 2006; Kwok 2005) we get a general idea that the term post-colonial began to be adopted in the literary field from around the late 1970s although postcolonial studies came to proliferation only in the early 1990s. The term was applied to a body of Commonwealth literature, written during and after colonialism by authors from the former colonies of the British Empire in Asia and Africa, who were products of Western scholarship. They were addressing the complex relations of domination and subordination between the colonizers and the colonized peoples by first analyzing how the colonizers constructed the images of the colonized in this literature and, secondly, by studying how the colonized in return deconstructed these images in their endeavour to articulate their identity, self-worth, and empowerment (Sugirtharajah 2002:11). The literature was also a critique of the structures, which sustained Western
hegemony.10 Some of it was ‘reading back’11 to the colonizer the colonial texts which had been used to legitimize colonialism. This involved questioning or challenging these colonial discourses and creating new forms of representation. Postcolonial studies were given impetus by the literary works of postcolonial critics like Edward Said’s Orientalism12
From a chronological point of view as stated by Segovia (2005:42), the development of the scope of postcolonialism has been as follows, although it must be noted that the term postcolonial is (1978), Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? and Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994) (see Moore 2006;
Sugirtharajah 2002:21-25).
The scope of the term ‘postcolonial’ has been a matter of development. The term was first used in 1959 by a British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph to refer to India, which gained its independence in 1947 (Sugirtharajah 2002:2). Sugirtharajah observes that since then the term has been used to refer to the formerly colonized countries, which have already gained independence.
From Segovia’s survey, we gather that ideas on the scope of the postcolonial period have been widened from a restriction to the historical dimension of Western colonization to a broader vision. Sugirtharajah (2002:2) raises a similar observation when he says that, recently, there has been a development and shift, whereby the meaning of the term has moved from it being understood as a linear chronological sequence to a much more universal and diverse sense. It is in this sense that I use the term ‘postcolonial in my study. In other words I do not make a claim that the era of the biblical context in which Paul wrote 1 Cor was a postcolonial era, but I use postcolonial theory as a tool of analysis of how the imperial context influenced Paul’s gendered worldviews.
10 Sugitharajah (2002:21-25) states that what postcolonial studies introduced in the field of literary criticism was power and politics which exposed how some literature, art and drama sustained the European colonizers.
11‘Writing back’ or ‘reading back’ is a form of reaction to the colonial texts by the colonized. It involves writing texts of resistance in order to assert their self-worth (see examples from Sugirtarajah 2001:74-108).
12 Citing Mcleod, Sugirtharajah indicates that a literary analysis of Said’s work manifests itself in three ways:
rereading of Western canonical texts to detect conscious or dormant colonial elements in them, a search in other documents to see how the colonized were constructed and in return how they resisted or embraced the colonizer (e.g. the work of Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak and historians who engaged in the subaltern studies). Finally there was an analysis of the literature that emerged from the colonized as a way of ‘writing back’ to the centre (e.g.
Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 1989).
not marked by any chronology as such,13
Scholars have not come to a consensus about the definition of the term postcolonialism, owing to its complex composition, and its interdisciplinary nature. Sugirtharajah himself regards the term
‘postcolonial’ as highly diverse and hence difficult to define since it covers “a multitude of intellectual and textual practices” (2006b:65). As implied by its historical background and the but refers to “a critical idea”, with post indicating “the intention to go beyond the colonial in all its forms” (Keller, Nausner and Rivera 2004:7).
From 1940s to 1970s, the term is understood in chronological terms. It is used as such by historians to refer to the post-independence period after the Second World War. From the late 1970s, a cultural understanding of the term develops among literary critics such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhaba. These writings analyzed in different ways, how the power of representation in colonial discourse impacted on both the metropolis and colonies alike. This focus acquired the name of postcolonial discourse.
Critics from the English commonwealth countries employed the rubric in a hyphenated form
‘post-colonialism’, to refer to cultural interactions in literary circles of colonial societies. These scholars did so to politicize the commonwealth literature and new literatures in English, produced since the 1960s. In other words, some critics have used the hyphenated form to refer to the historical period or the aftermath of colonialism. More recently, the term has been used without the hyphen (‘postcolonialism’) to refer to the political, linguistic, cultural, economic, and even the psychological experiences of the former colonies of Europe, i.e. a reactive resistance discourse of the colonized in which they not only seek to recover the past from Western slander and misinformation, but also to interrogate the continuing forms of neo-colonialism (Sugirtharajah 2002:13). Currently, the term is generally used without the hyphen to refer to the whole field, including the textual practices, psychological conditions, and historical processes, and hence the meaning is dependent on the user (Sugirtharajah 2002:3). It is also currently located in various other fields, varying from medieval studies, to music and sociology, to sports.
All these disciplines continue to uncover the impact of colonialism and the continuing forms of neo-colonialism in the form of globalization (Sugirtharajah 2006b:64).
13 According to Sugirtharajah (2006:65), “postcolonial is not about chronological markers of ‘periods’, ‘eras’, or
‘aeons’. It is about a series of anti-colonial resistances undertaken in order to instill a new sense of national pride and purpose, both before and after the formal end of territorial colonialism.”
scope above, postcolonialism is a discourse of resistance to all forms of imperial domination.
However, each scholar defines it in the way he/she wants to use it. Sugirtharajah (2002) and Dube (1997) in their usage of the term define it in terms of its historical setting, usage and the classification of texts.14 Kwok adds the human element. She states that the colonized are also referred to as postcolonial and proposes that even the colonizer should be postcolonial because he/she requires decolonization of the mind. Keller, Nausner and Rivera (2004:8), following Sugirtharajah, regard it as “an active interrogation of the hegemonic systems of thought, textual codes, and symbolic practices which the West constructed in its domination of colonial subjects.”
Following Keller, Nausner and Rivera , in my study I also use the term postcolonial as “an active interrogation of the hegemonic systems of thought, textual codes, and symbolic practices” within the text of 1 Cor 11:1-16. As such, my simple working definition will take into account views of such scholars as Sugirtharajah, Dube and Kwok with regard to the setting, use and classification of the term postcolonialism. I regard ‘Postcolonialism’ as a literary technical term that inquires into the complex relationships of domination and subordination, dependence and independence, resistance and collusion as these occur within biblical and contemporary postcolonial contexts, such as Kenya. I will therefore use postcolonial biblical criticism, as a critical anti- colonial/imperial hermeneutical approach, which employs both a hermeneutics of suspicion and a hermeneutics of retrieval or restoration. This will contribute towards exposing and challenging the oppressive colonial and imperial ideologies in the continued use of biblical texts to construct gender power relations in the church, in the history of the Christian tradition.
Having located postcolonial biblical criticism within the context of secular postcolonial studies I now turn my attention to postcolonial hermeneutics within the broader context of biblical criticism.
14 In its historical usage, it refers to the aftermath of colonialism, in its setting, it refers to the reactive resistance of the colonized in their effort to recover their past from the Western slander (Sugirtharajah 2002:13) as they struggle to decolonize and liberate themselves. In its classification, it refers to a complex collection of texts that are brought , born and used in imperial setting to legitimate, resist, or collaborate with imperialism (Dube 1997:14).